In article <··················@world.std.com>, Kent M Pitman wrote:
>[Rant alert.]
>
>Maybe it's just me, but I find this a remarkably irritating thread.
>
>Certainly it's a possible thing for someone to give away intellectual
>property, but it feels to me like the whole discussion presupposes that
>his only rational or polite or reasonable course of action is to make
>the book more available. I don't see that.
>
>The apparent thirst on this newsgroup for pursuing a "gimme free stuff"
>seriously irks me. It's one thing to appreciate free stuff that comes
>out (whether it's implementations, libraries, documentation, or text books).
>It's quite another to start demanding that people turn profit-making
>ventures into non-profit-making ones.
frankly, i don't see your point. at least the first poster was willing to
pay. the problem is that this book is in pretty high demand, and for what-
ever reason the publisher is not willing to satisfy this demand. mr. graham
certainly doesn't profit from somebody offering $200 for a used copy, or
people putting their copies up for auction. at least one of the posters
in this thread asked for the tex files and offered to pay.
> ...
>You may, by the way, think that a publisher is just a nameless entity
>that is profiteering off of our community. But I *want* publishers to
>make as much money off of our community's books as they can because it
>means they are likely to think of books on Lisp as profit-making
>ventures rather than charity, and it makes them more likely to publish
>more in the future rather than just to assume that all profit-making on
>Lisp was to be done in the past.
this ng has been full of requests for sources for this book for quite some
time now. so it is apparent that there is an unsatisfied demand.
<rant>i was brought up in the belief that businesses (like publishers)
make there money by providing services that customers want in a way that
satisfies them. it seems that this has turned into them providing
these services only when it makes them lots of money. if the two graham
books don't make enough money for prentice hall that its worth for them to
run a second printing, i'm sure there is a smaller publisher that would be
willing to do it. there are several university presses who publish books
that have less sales prospects than pg's lisp books. isn't there a way for
ph to let them handle it?
</rant>
--
hs
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"The cheapest pride is national pride. I demonstrates the lack of
characteristics and achievements you can be proud of. The worst loser
can have national pride" - Schopenhauer
··@paradise.nirvananet (Hartmann Schaffer) writes:
>In article <··················@world.std.com>, Kent M Pitman wrote:
>>You may, by the way, think that a publisher is just a nameless
>>entity that is profiteering off of our community. But I *want*
>>publishers to make as much money off of our community's books as
>>they can because it means they are likely to think of books on Lisp
>>as profit-making ventures rather than charity, and it makes them
>>more likely to publish more in the future rather than just to assume
>>that all profit-making on Lisp was to be done in the past.
I've had some dealings with publishers; it is not at all obvious to me
that it is necessarily particularly good for any sector to be
particularly dependent on how profitable publishers are. The _main_
beneficiary of a profitable publisher is the owner of the publisher,
with authors being an _exceedingly_ distant second.
I don't think it's quite as bad as the recording industry, where
artists make a _little_ money so that the guys in the recording
industry can make a _lot_ of money, but there certainly was no
question of Graham finding that _On Lisp_ would be a runaway
bestseller that he'd make $40M on.
> this ng has been full of requests for sources for this book for
> quite some time now. so it is apparent that there is an unsatisfied
> demand.
Fair to say...
> <rant>i was brought up in the belief that businesses (like
> publishers) make there money by providing services that customers
> want in a way that satisfies them. it seems that this has turned
> into them providing these services only when it makes them lots of
> money. if the two graham books don't make enough money for prentice
> hall that its worth for them to run a second printing, i'm sure
> there is a smaller publisher that would be willing to do it. there
> are several university presses who publish books that have less
> sales prospects than pg's lisp books. isn't there a way for ph to
> let them handle it? </rant>
You may be missing one of the bits of "remuneration": part of the
"benefit" of being published is in having your book associated with a
prestigious publisher.
- Getting published by SAMS is hardly a sign of being a great author;
- Unix folk tend to respect books published by O'Reilly;
- Getting published by Addison Wesley or Prentice Hall _does_
qualify...
And getting published by "No Name Press" might well do reputational
injury.
--
(concatenate 'string "aa454" ·@freenet.carleton.ca")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/resume.html
Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they spend so much of the
intervening time wearing digital watches?
In article <······················@news6.giganews.com>, ········@hex.net wrote:
> ...
>> <rant>i was brought up in the belief that businesses (like
>> publishers) make there money by providing services that customers
>> want in a way that satisfies them. it seems that this has turned
>> into them providing these services only when it makes them lots of
>> money. if the two graham books don't make enough money for prentice
>> hall that its worth for them to run a second printing, i'm sure
>> there is a smaller publisher that would be willing to do it. there
>> are several university presses who publish books that have less
>> sales prospects than pg's lisp books. isn't there a way for ph to
>> let them handle it? </rant>
>
>You may be missing one of the bits of "remuneration": part of the
>"benefit" of being published is in having your book associated with a
>prestigious publisher.
>
>- Getting published by SAMS is hardly a sign of being a great author;
>- Unix folk tend to respect books published by O'Reilly;
>- Getting published by Addison Wesley or Prentice Hall _does_
> qualify...
>
>And getting published by "No Name Press" might well do reputational
>injury.
i wouldn't call mit press or university of cambridge press "no name press".
both of them have published books about advanced languages
--
hs
----------------------------------------------------------------
"The cheapest pride is national pride. I demonstrates the lack of
characteristics and achievements you can be proud of. The worst loser
can have national pride" - Schopenhauer